In our culture we move very quickly and with multiple stimuli, often over-riding the messages of our bodies. While our practice can heal, strengthen, ease and balance us, sometimes we arrive on our mats thinking we (or some "bad" part) needs to be figured out, changed, fixed, or avoided. In the true spirit of yoga, these "messengers" of tension, pain, suffering or confusion are actually meant to be listened to and learned from...So, this week let's come back to our practice as an opportunity to pause and engage deep, compassionate, responsive listening (in Sanskrit sravana)

From 2007 retreat notes with my teacher Richard Miller: Whenever we separate from ourselves or our truth, it leaves a residue of pain and disharmony which points back to our innate intelligence. There is no single cause to be figured out for anything because everything co-arises out of multiple interdependent factors both inside and outside ourselves. What our practice does is deepen our ability to listen to our body's messages, and to the deeper intelligence within ourselves, so we can live in harmony with Life.

Our minds will wander, as is their nature, our emotions will rise and fall like waves - there no need for judging or criticizing or trying to stop this. However, we can observe that when our minds stray back to ruminate on the past, we will tend towards anger or depression; and when our minds wander into the future to worry about what may or may not come, we will tend towards anxiety and fear.

Yoga practice asks us to rest in open, compassionate, curious, responsive awareness in the present moment, without refusing or exaggerating. It asks us to meet each moment as an inquiry into what is true and what is needed. It asks us to begin to trust our body's deep intelligence, and trust the unfolding of Life.

From my wise teacher Richard Miller: Let life be an experiment moment by moment; it is okay to "go backwards" and okay to "forget"; remembering will reassert itself.... The real question of our practice is "Am I willing to meet and welcome myself again and again and again?" The good news is that, ultimately, we are the welcoming awareness itself.

To keep us safe, our neurology is wired to pay more attention to what is "wrong" or potentially dangerous than it is to what is "right" and working well; the neuroscientists call this "negativity bias". In addition to this, we often misperceive that we are our body and what is happened to it, or our beliefs or emotions: "I'm an (fill in label of choice), "I'm depressed", "I'm in pain", "I have a bad (fill in body part of choice)"...

Yoga offers us another way to look, asserting that we are not just our body, breath, mind, emotions or experiences, but rather that which witnesses and senses all of these. While our hatha practice nourishes our body and helps it be stronger, more balanced and more flexible, this way of perceiving can change our whole experience of both ourselves and life.

From Donna Farhi (2006): To be innocent is to be without injury. We are looking for that part of ourselves that lies beneath our injuries - that part which has not been and cannot be injured. We are remembering who we really are.

Yoga is not a passive endeavour. In our yoga practice, and in our lives, we are faced with the need to negotiate the delicate balance between pairs of apparent opposites - stability and strength, ease and effort, comfort and discomfort, witnessing and action... In order to do this successfully we must develop our ability to know what is unfolding in our environment, and how and where we are at this moment, without judgement, resistance or exaggeration This acceptance of "what is" is again balanced with its apparent "opposite" - the possibility of transformation and change.

From my teacher Richard Miller, in 2006: Acceptance is not a passive state. The world is the way it is [and we are the way we are]. In each moment we can stop, be present, listen, and then act. We can ask: what is true at this moment? and what is the response that's needed from me? We can say yes to that.

Author

Misha Butot RCSW, ERYT 500 is a longtime clinical social worker and senior yoga teacher living in Victoria, BC